ive plants. The old stories opened
a new world of thought, and into this unknown realm she entered,
rambling amid such wonderful scenes that never again could their
mysterious charm cease; when some time later her father came down from
his study one day with a volume of _Ivanhoe_ in his hand, and said: "I
did not intend that my children should ever read novels, but they must
read Scott," another door into the realm of fairy was opened to the
delighted child.

This power to lift and lose herself in a region of thought so
different from her own, became thereafter the peculiar gift by
which she was enabled to undertake the work which made her name
distinguished.

The library corner, however, did not hold all the good things of life,
only part of them. Outside was the happy world of a healthy country
child, who grew as joyously as one of her own New England flowers.
In the spring there were excursions in the woods and fields after
the wild blossoms that once a year turned the country-side into
fairy-land; in the summer was the joy of picnics in the old forests,
and of fishing excursions along the banks of the streams; in the
autumn came nutting parties, when the children ran races with the
squirrels to see who could gather the most nuts; and in the winter,
when the snow and ice covered the earth, life went on as gayly as
ever, with coasting and snow-balling, and the many ways in which the
child's heart tunes itself to the spirit of nature.

By the time she was five years old Harriet was a regular pupil at a
small school near by, whither she also conducted, day after day,
her younger brother, Henry Ward Beecher, afterward the celebrated
preacher. She was a very conscientious little pupil, and besides her
school lessons, was commended for having learned twenty-seven hymns
and two long chapters in the Bible during one summer. School-life
henceforth was the serious business of existence, and in her twelfth
year she appears as one of the honor pupils at the yearly school
exhibition, and was gratified by having her composition read in the
presence of the distinguished visitors, her father, the minister,
being among the number. The subject of the composition was the
immortality of the soul, and into it Harriet had woven, as only a
clever child could, all the serious thoughts that she had gleaned
from theological volumes in the library, or sermons that her father
preached, or from the grave conversations that were common among